Charts & Add-Ons, updating

Settings/Charts and Add-Ons/update, Build 48:
Updating for the first time takes a long time to finish. I didn’t time it but left the iPad plugged in and came back a few hours later. The 14460 Tiles had only half finished and the iPad had gone to sleep. I assume if the pad goes to sleep the update stops. In addition, when the progress bar finally shows the update complete the label shows “updating”. If in fact the updates are finished I would expect the label to change as well. Question: Does this one function, update, take care of updating charts, ActiveCaptain and NOAA tides and currents, all at the same time?

Never mind. I just saw your note to delete the old charts and down load the smaller local region. I did that and the update zipped through in seconds.

I still see a problem with downloading charts. I am using the new mode, and selected an area of most of the Salish Sea + some Canadian waters. It says updating 221k ‘tiles’ and the bar never moves. I left it overnight running and it never completed. I have a quite good connection at home so I am sure this is not my connection problem. Downloading NOAA raster charts in other navigation apps took me minutes, not hours.

Thanks,
Maciek

Maciek, when you are on “Charts &Add-Ons” did you first delete all your previous tiles? At first I didn’t scroll down the page to see the additional instructions on implementing the new chart tile update process. Once I deleted all my old charts and than downloaded the smaller chart region it took only seconds to update.
Rich C

Build 48 Question on Charts & Add-On Updating: If I’m sailing up the coast with a previous chart region installed and sail to the end of my downloaded charts I assume I’ll need to access the Internet again to get the next adjoining region. Will there be a way to download and store more than one region of tiles so the trip can continue? Another words, can I store many regions on an SD card or maybe a separate folder for just this situation?

As currently implemented, the ability to download charts is fairly limited and only useful for a small area. We will continue to make improvements over the next few weeks and hope to be able to make the downloads take a lot less time than they do now.

If your device goes to sleep or you switch apps during an update, the update will need to be restarted when you’re back in Coastal Explorer. However, the update process should very quickly get back to where it left off; it does not start downloading from scratch.

When the update is complete, the progress bar should go away, but we have seen it stick around and are trying to figure out why that is happening.

The update process will update everything that you see listed in one operation. Updating the tide/current predictions and ActiveCaptain is very fast compared to the chart tiles so they are not included in the progress bar.

We expect to enhance the area selection in the future. This may involve non-rectangular areas and/or multiple areas with independent options.

Thank you, Brad!

Just for completeness, here is what I was able to do:

  • I did not delete any prior charts, because I was downloading them for the first time. This was just after the installation on last Saturday (4/18), so I assume I already had the new build.
  • As I mentioned, I selected a region larger than what was the default. The download count stated 222,000 “tiles” whatever that means.
  • I was able to complete the download process after turning off the iPad’s screen lock and leaving CE running as an active application overnight. It completed in the morning.

Will there be an option of using charts other than NOAA in the future, especially for non-US regions?
Will there be an option to download entire sections of NOAA charts, for example all West US?

Thanks,
Maciek

Funny thing happened on the way to the farm… my cable provided dropped service, had to replace 3/4 mile of telephone pole cable. Web-Managed Wireless Access Point (WAP) disconnected from the cloud mgmt portal, intelligent router tagged the WAP as insecure, turning off all wireless services. So I enabled Mobile Hotspot support from my desktop PC, providing the internet access needed for my iPhone to upgrade the CE iOS Program Build and Raster Chart files. Had the system hang forever, until deleting the older charts, then reinstalled new regions (Maine to Florida) without issue. I then re-initiated Updates to receive my NOAA Tide and Current Predictions (etc.). Charts look really great, and they Pan/Zoom quickly too…!

First thing I noticed was that as I spun in my chair the boat cursor rotated orientation to match compass heading, with almost real-time accuracy (pretty cool Brad…!). Next thing I noticed is that I am still locked out of my Boatyard (until next week) so I can’t yet finish installing my new battery banks and get my sailing vessel ready to launch. People ask me how I am going to spend my federal check… “gonna buy more ammo, or a new anchor”? Nah, I am thinking to donate it to a Civic 501C3 that can distribute it fairly between the local Hospital, the Police, EMS & the Senior Center… then dig into my beer fund to finally tear out the ActiSense USB 2000 Gateway and replace it with this cool dude named “Nemo”… which will be hard-wired to the Wirie Pro (providing coastal 802.11 b/g/n internet w/ long-range cellular backup, and broadcasting all my NMEA 2k data to these nifty handheld iThing devices running C.E.

Brad can advise me if the Nemo will permit automatic upload of .GPX routes from CE 4.0 to the Garmin XS942 Chart Plotter (over the NMEA 2000 network) or if I need to interface 0183 to “send” my route info from CE 4.0 to the chart plotter (guess I might also be able to send that data over the wireless network too?).

Until I get my boat launched, I am not as lucky as Ron to be using this cool new program live, physically “attached” to my Nav system. Water so very near… yet not a drop to sail in (yet).

Praying that the entire Beta Community, and ALL the Rosepoint family stays out of harm’s way, for we have miles of smiles ahead of our cool, new software trials…

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